The elderly are one of the most rapidly growing, most increasingly metropolitanized, most often victimized segments of the population of the United States today. Despite the growing importance of the problems that this part of our population faces, however, little empirical research has been done on their legal problems. The present research focuses on the range of legal problems facing aged individuals in an urban setting (San Francisco) and on the range of their responses to these problems--an ethnography of the law of the aged. A major objective is to ascertain the perceived adequacy of legal institutions for the elderly, and to the extent that they are seen to be inadequate, to document the impact of these inadequacies on the mental health of this population. Quantitative data (obtained from interviews with a purposive sample of 300 informants) and in-depth qualitative data (from a smaller sample) will be used for comparative analysis of the effects of key variables (particularly the nature of social ties, as they are cross-cut by a number of socioeconomic and demographic variables) on differential legal behavior. In addition, lawyers and other service personnel who deal with the elderly in the legal sphere will be interviewed to learn to what degree their perceptions of the legal needs and problems of the elderly are congruent with the perceptions of the elderly themselves. The research will focus not only on formal legal mechanisms, but also on existing alternative legal mechanisms and institutions, and on the conditions necessary for the generation of new social forms which may aid in the processing of disputes and grievances. The research should be of theoretical and pragmatic interest to planners and policy-makers in law, medicine, and gerontology, as well as to social scientists.